So many battles lost in so little time. What kind of battles you ask? Well, it’s the kind that involves potatoes, tomatoes, corn, cinnamon rolls, a thorn and a hoe.
The other day I was asked to help cut potatoes for our project to feed street children that sniff glue in a neighboring city. I thought nothing of it when I nicked my thumb and cut off a piece of the tip. Just a little blood means no fowl. The next item was tomatoes. Using a butcher size knife on miniature tomatoes is dangerous for me as I sliced my pinky. We shucked and took the kernels off of a bajillion ears of corn for the project when my other thumb nail cut through the raw kernel and jammed it between the nail and skin like a splinter. Again, only a little blood so no fowl. I’ll write a blog on the feeding project a little later.
The next morning I woke up at 6 am to help Pastor Patrick make homemade cinnamon rolls. It was a lot of fun until I had to melt butter. Karen, one of the helpers, brought me a metal bowl for what I thought was to put the butter in and heat it up over the little charcoal burner. In reality, it was a metal bowl that had been in the charcoal oven and was for me to put butter in to melt. I burnt my three middle fingers on the same hand as the pinky and thumb injury. Blisters formed almost immediately.
After the cinnamon rolls are made, we go to the church to work for the day. I am a sight with 6 out of 10 fingers bandaged so I can help make the mud walls. The first thing we did at work was hoe up the solid dirt to make it back into mud to put on the walls. As soon as I began, my hand slipped down the hoe gashing my skin between my thumb and first finger on the same hand as the 5 injured fingers. Talk about wanting to kick the dirt in frustration. Grr. I kept working and used my feet to mix the mud…something that wasn’t injured on that day.
As we left to go eat lunch at home, I had to borrow the pastor’s super thin flip flops because he borrowed my shoes when I was stomping the mud. Funny how I stooped to grab my water bottle but in the process lodged a giant thorn through the flip flop into my foot where it was stuck until my teammates pulled it out as I was dancing around to avoid falling into the briar patch. Awesome. There was nothing like a mile walk home ahead of me.
Eight Band-Aids and some medical tape later my team and I arrived at the church work site and began making mud walls again. As usual for me, I saw what needed done and filled the role…of forming the mud balls with my hand to hand to the pastor so he could stick them on the stick frame. My cuts were muddied and my shoes broke, but half of the mud was up, so the day’s work was well worth it.
Thank God for blessings that come in the form of having Band-Aids and teammates that have Neosporin and burn cream. Also for teammates willing to clean the cuts filled with dirt! Life is funny sometimes.
Satan will not stop me. His little schemes make me laugh. He must not know me and the determination God has given me well enough.
By the time I am posting this blog, I ripped a ¼ of my toenail off the next day. Have no fear… I am now in recovery mode and the dirt was, as I have always said, a natural healer!
